I know you have your hands full with SBR and the soon to come schmup game, but have really been loving 7 days to die since you mentioned it. I think it's all the crafting that I love so much. So I thought I'd ask if Arcen had any plans for a crafting/building game? Not a 7DTD game in particular, but something where the bulk of the gameplay involves finding and crafting and building. It has sort of become my new favorite over platformers. Thank you for listening,-Teal

That sort of survival game has become a new favorite of mine, too. The specific element of crafting is not my main focus, but certainly that is a part of it. Anyway, yes, the next game is actually going to have a lot of those sorts of elements. It's not not really a SHMUP at all anymore, heh. New name, too!

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Crafting in an Arcen Game? Now I'm curious. Crafting is one of this stuff that makes a game a lot better for if it's done correctly. I like to build my own stuff because it gives me the feeling doing soemthing myself rather on relying on stuff that I found or bought.

That sort of survival game has become a new favorite of mine, too. The specific element of crafting is not my main focus, but certainly that is a part of it. Anyway, yes, the next game is actually going to have a lot of those sorts of elements. It's not not really a SHMUP at all anymore, heh. New name, too!

Sounds very cool, thank you for the answer back. I will be looking forward not only to SBR, but to the new game too. Like the new name, very nice.

I don't want to get into the next game too much in terms of discussion, but it is something where I have to always be planning at least one game in advance (so that when artists and so forth finish their work, they have something new to do even though I'm still on the current game). In this particular case, the general idea is that I want to create basically the game that I hoped Don't Starve Together would be, but (for me) wasn't. In some respects, the 2D expression of 7 Days To Die, but not really. A bit of SPAZ inspiration, I'd say. A whole lot of new.

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"Life at the end of the universe"Interesting, but a bit long, don't you think?LEU? Or "LatEotU"? Ok, sorry, I stop it.

All that things reminds me of Shellcore Command. How I'm sad the dev didn't go forward... Skirmish expansion is... good, but not as juicy as the campaign was. I tried to replicate it, but made a lame buggy shmup. I'm still trying something, after years, however. How I feel Airship Eternal would be all I wanted from it...

Crafting is one of this stuff that makes a game a lot better for if it's done correctly.

If done right, crafting is awesome.Done poorly it feels either tacked on or nonsensical.

Subnautica I'm worried is going to fall into "nonsensical" ("we have matter replicators, buuuut...no blueprints, go find me 30 thingamajigs" or maybe "we have matter replicators, buuut we need raw mat--hey quit that, you can't just ask for a submarine, uberarmor, and a laser cannon! This is the early game, we need unobtainium for those!").

Dungeon Defenders Eternity fell into "tacked on." You had to find blueprints that when crafted (with a maximum number of craftings allowed) resulted in a specific random item (and all the crafting ingredients were arbitrary bullshit. Bat wings, blood drops, wrapping paper...

Yes, that tacked-on feeling is a big part of why I never liked crafting too much. Until the last year, when I felt like I saw it done right or almost-right.

Minecraft did it in a way that doesn't make it a crafting game. You get stuff and you turn it into other stuff. Somewhere between Minecraft and Terraria (here's a list of all the stuff you can make) is a good spot.

It, however, is not the only spot. The good spot is where crafting allows customization. Borderlands could have had that system (all the randomly generated items used the system in the background, but it was never exposed to the player). And that, I think, is where the real fun is.

I'm a bigger fan of the Terraria style than Minecrafts. I support the idea that you have to find or make the recipes once (e.g., Sword of the Stars: The Pit) and then they show up to be crafted (if you have the components). Having to create them each time I find rather annoying (e.g., Craft the World).

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I never could really get into Terraria. I really loved Minecraft, and still play it every so often, but I don't play it in an advanced way and so most of the crafting is irrelevant to me. I mean, I craft a few dozen things and that's it. I don't get into crazy redstone circuits and so on.

In 7 Days To Die, there's not a thing that I could complain about with their crafting in v10, aside from perhaps the lack of variety you start to feel after about 50 hours (I have 70 hours in that game). It's ludicrous to even say that, I know, because complaining about anything that gets old after 50 freaking hours is hardly a complaint. Anyway, but I think I can do better in my own context, in a completely different way.

Don't Starve Together overall has a sort of crafting that I really liked, too, because it was very lightweight but still mattered. That really felt like a survival game more than a scavenging game, and I like that bent. 7DTD is a mixture of survival, scavenging, and base construction. I'd like to give that sort of feel in a sci-fi setting in 2D, with a completely different premise and different threats and combat mechanics and so on. We'll see how the prototypes turn out when we get to that point.

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What about Terraria could you not get into? It is one of a few games my wife will play with me, so in the continuum of coops, it is pretty high for me.

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